Fri Nov 24, 2017

IAU Symposium #339 on Time-Domain Astronomy

This month I visited South Africa (and the African continent for the first
time!) to attend the
Southern Horizons in Time-Domain
Astronomy meeting in
Stellenbosch.
The programme featured an exhaustive roster of hot topics in the transient
realm right now — from kilonovae through FRBs to supernovae and stellar
pulsations.
A wide range of instrument development activities were reported, both
world-wide and in South Africa, which is of course the host of the
Southern African Large Telescope (SALT)
and the Square Kilometer Array precursor
MeerKAT
As well there were workshops on relevant topics including astroinformatics
and machine learning.
The setting, in the midst of SA's
wine regions was pretty hard to beat,
and the chance to visit Cape Town — surely one of the most geographically
stunning cities in the world — was a nice bonus.
The program and most of the talks are now online so check it out!

Thu Jun 30, 2016

Thermonuclear bursts in Japan

This June I visited Niigata, Japan for the
14th Nuclei in the Cosmos meeting. This
biennial gathering attracts a mix of nuclear experimentalists, modelers,
and astrophysicists. I presented a poster on our thermonuclear burst
model-observation comparisons.
Following the meeting I stopped by
RIKEN in Tokyo, where members of the
MAXI instrument team were the very
generous hosts of a meeting of our
International Space Science Instituteinternational team.
The Monitor of All-Sky X-ray Image (MAXI) instrument, deployed on NASA's
International Space Station,
has been continuously monitoring the X-ray sky for several years, and has
detected many rare, long-duration thermonuclear bursts, as well as transient
outbursts of known and new sources.

Mon May 30, 2016

JINA-CEE International Symposium on Neutron Stars in the Multi-Messenger Era: Prospects & Challenges

In May I travelled to Athens, OH for the
JINA-CEEsymposium on neutron
stars.
This was a great week of presentations on a very wide range of astrophysics
topics relating to neutron stars, including my own presentation on
thermonuclear bursts, but also discussions of new & upcoming missions like
NICER and
ASTROSAT,
progress on mass-radius measurements from bursts and cooling
transients, rotation-powered pulsars, gravitational waves, you name it.
The
week kicked off on Sunday with a satellite workshop on
Experiments for X-ray Burst Nucleosynthesis,
where we reviewed the prospects for better experimental constraints on the
many nuclear reactions important to thermonuclear bursts.
A big thank-you to JINA-CEE for supporting my trip!

Fri Dec 18, 2015

First meeting of new ISSI burst team

In December we kicked off a new international team supported by Bern's
International Space Science Institute.
This team is focussed on reconciling experimental, observational and numerical
investigations on thermonuclear (X-ray) bursts and the nuclear reactions that
power them.
Due to the strong gravity and high temperature, these bursts probe nuclear
physics and reactions not encountered elsewhere in nature, and are also influenced by
the properties of the underlying neutron star - and hence the properties of
matter at these extreme conditions.
Our goals include identifying the key nuclear reactions which
influence the burst lightcurve; taking advantage of new rare-isotope accelerator-based experiments and satellite observations to provide stringent tests of
numerical models; identifying specific cases of ignition and burning from
observation-model comparisons; and (ultimately) providing qualitatively new constraints on the
properties of neutron stars and nuclear matter.

Although this is the third
such team for me, it's the first I've led. Bern itself was once again
celebrating Christmas,
with the Weihnachtsmarkt in full swing, including the always popular
gluhwein shack.

Tue Nov 10, 2015

AEI-ICTS workshop on gravitational wave astronomy

It's an exciting time for Indian science at the moment, with the
September 28th launch of the
ASTROSAT multiwavelength astronomy mission,
and the development of a new interferometric gravitational-wave detector,
IndIGO.
Motivated by these developments, the
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences
hosted a joint worshop between November 4th—6th with the Albert Einstein Institute, at the new ICTS campus north of Bengaluru (Bangalore).
The meeting featured a range of talks on searches for gravitational waves as
well as X-ray, radio and optical followup. I gave an invited talk on our
knowledge of the orbital parameters of the best continuous-wave candidate source, Scorpius X-1, based on our 2014 paper.

Fri Jun 26, 2015

40 years of X-ray bursts: Extreme explosions in dense environments

This June the terrific people at ESAC hosted a 3-day
workshop
to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the discovery of X-ray bursts.
The workshop featured a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art of
burst physics and phenomenology, and plenty of opportunities for productive
discussions. The organisers included a conference dinner at the fantastic
Rstaurante Zerain
which was a terrific (if very late) night out.
It was also wonderful to spend some time in Madrid, and enjoy some sunshine!
On behalf of my SOC co-chair,
I had a lot of fun presenting the conference summary.

Tue Jan 27, 2015

Astronomy Decadal Plan 2016—25 exposure draft

The NCA has completed and released the first draft of Australian Astronomy's
Decadal plan for 2016—25, which you can download
here.
Now is your last chance for feedback on the committee's recommendations!
To provide plenty of opportunity for contributions, a series of meetings will
be held around the country in February. Melbourne's meeting will be held on
19th February at Swinburne.

Wed Aug 06, 2014

Physics of Neutron stars 2014

The Physics of Neutron Stars
meeting is held approximately every three years, and honors prominent Soviet
physicist
Yakov
Zel'dovich. The conference talks and posters covered a very wide range
of topics relevant to neutron stars, from pulsar emission mechanisms to
magnetars and supernova explosions. I gave a talk on
observations of thermonuclear bursts. The organisers offered a cultural program
including excursions to prominent attractions in this beautiful city; I chose
to visit the
Catherine Palace and park, with a boat ride
of the extensive canal network to follow. Very nice conference in a terrific
venue.